TheGreatInfidel

In one of the Meditations Descartes argues something along the lines of:
1. Bodies are spatially divisible.
2. My mind is not spatially divisible.
3. Ergo, My mind is not identical with a body.

How can this argument be criticized?

spacer1

I've never studied logic (or philosophy for that matter), so I'm no expert, but I would say that we could rewrite the three terms as:

Every A has the property X.
B does not have the property X.
Therefore, (obviously??) B is not A.

If you are going to denote them as A and B to start with.....

spacer1

I just had a smoke and thought that my last post seemed a bit silly, so here may be a better response:

Spatial divisibility requires a mind to divide it.

spacer1

Damn, I don't like that either, since the original statment was "Bodies are spatially divisible."

I think I've made a fool enough of myself. I'll get back to you.

TheGreatInfidel

I'm looking for a rebuttal or criticism of the argument, I don't see how your reply does either of that. Maybe you need to elaborate.

Luiseach

'2.' is not necessarily true because the 'mind' is itself a part of the body.

spacer1

Sorry, I think I agree too much with the argument to offer a good criticism against it.

spacer1

On what basis can you assert:

"2. My mind is not spatially divisible."?

starling

Hmm, firstly. flips open head, pulls out brain Where did I put that scalpel... ah here it is. Holds up brain This is a brain. cleanly bisects it This is not a brain. The body is not spatially divisible, rather it can't be called a body if spatially divided enough.

Secondly, the mind can be divided. I for one have a mind for thinking scientifically, a mind for presenting myself to others, a mind for criticizing myself, and so on. If the mind could not be divided, no one would have ever thought up the "fork()" POSIX system call.

A great scholar once said "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." (Forgot his name.) Our bodies are indivisible wholes. We are both our physical substance and the pattern in space made by that substance. Whether there is something beyond those two things, such as a soul, is unknown to me. But break the pattern, and you don't have a body: you have a puddle of protoplasm. The mind is as spatially divisible as the brain, which is evidenced as damage to the brain is directly correlated with damage to the mind.


Starling
Who can't really take out the brain and check though.

mtdew

At Starling. Firstly, no matter how many times you divide something the substance remains. The properties may change, but it'll still be pieces of the same substance. "Here are the remains of my clock." Secondly, no, the mind can't be spatially divided. You can't place a thought slightly to your left, and another somewhere over your shoulder. That's like saying you can spatially divide the red of an apple.

There is a more elegant coup de grace to Descartes' Divisibility Argument. It conflicts with Starling's attack, but he's wrong on a bunch of points and isn't approaching the problem correctly. If we postulate that the mind, as an amalgamation of our thoughts, emotions, David Bowe lyrics, and other mental states, is in fact a state (or property) of the brain, and then we chop a brain in half with a cerebral commissurotomy (dividing the two hemispheres by removing the corpus callosum) our thoughts will "fracture," or rather, it seems our consciousness becomes divided into two separate entities. Descartes is correct in writing the mind, as an extended substance, doesn't make sense, but if we assume that the brain is the extended substance (of which our minds are a property), and we can show the brain can be divided (which we clearly can), the argument still holds, but doesn't prove Descartes' overarching point. We can assume either that the mind is an ethereal substance (for which we have no proof), or that the mind is a property of the brain (for which we have lots of scientific proof). In either case, the conclusion is reached: the mind is not like an extended substance.

But it doesn't force duality upon us.

(Ectoplasm is bunk.)